Chris Cuomo Cracks Up at Trump Campaign’s Absurd Demand for CNN Apology Over Terrible Poll Numbers: ‘Can You Believe This?!’
CNN’s Chris Cuomo couldn’t help but laugh at the partly absurd, partly surreal complaints from the White House and Trump campaign about the terrible 2020 poll numbers coming out for President Donald Trump.
It all started on Monday, when Trump very publicly freaked out about the brutal CNN poll, which showed him losing to Democratic nominee Joe Biden by a whopping 14 percentage points, 55% – 41%. The president wasted little time vociferously attacking it on Twitter as “FAKE” and then announced he was taking the bizarre step of hiring another pollster to “analyze” it. (The polling firm he hired, McLaughlin & Associates, suffers from a poor reputation within the industry and once infamously claimed then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor was leading his GOP primary race by 34 points — just days before Cantor lost the race by 11 points.) Trump’s pique over the embarrassing poll didn’t abate as the week went on, either, because on Wednesday, the Trump campaign sent a cease-and-desist letter to the cable network, demanding both a retraction and an apology for the poll. CNN’s response: “We stand by our poll.”
A clearly perplexed Cuomo addressed the campaign’s demands on his Wednesday night show.
“Here’s another one for the ‘Can’t make it up’ category,” Cuomo said. “The president’s campaign demanded that CNN retract and apologize for a recent poll because it showed him well behind presumptive democratic nominee Joe Biden. Our network’s message is this: ‘No.’ This is America. You don’t control what a free press says. That’s the free part.”
“Now, the interesting part to me is that to push back on the CNN poll, Trump hired one of the least accurate pollsters in the industry, McLaughlin & Associates, to make more incorrect and misleading claims,” Cuomo added.
“If there’s any doubt that the president’s allegations are baseless, you just need to look at this tweet,” Cuomo said, starting to crack up, as the screen showed an image of a Trump tweet from three weeks ago touting a CNN poll.
“Can you believe that we have to have these conversations?! Can you believe this?!” an incredulous Cuomo said, breaking into laughter and burying his face in his hands. “I mean, literally, it would not make it through a screenplay treatment. It just wouldn’t. A week ago he called on state TV over at Fox, they’re his puppets over there at night. To put up a CNN poll. Why am I laughing? Because I don’t want to cry on television, that’s why. I don’t want to cry. It is so sick and sad and obvious: lie, deny, defy. Divide, divide, divide. Divide and conquer. That’s what this president is about. And it worked for him, it got him here. Will it keep him here? That’s up to you, OK?”
Watch the video above, via CNN.
